In China, Shark Fin Soup Is So 2010

Will Chinese President Xi Jinping’s campaign to save the Communist Party end up saving the shark?

China’s consumption of shark fin soup is declining rapidly as young Chinese become more environmentally conscious and the government’s anticorruption campaign discourages showy banquets and conspicuous consumption.

A study released this week by WildAid, a San Francisco-based civic group that’s led a high-profile media campaign against the trade, found that sales among shark fin vendors in the southern city of Guangzhou declined 82% in the past two years, while wholesale prices fell 57% and retail prices dropped 47%.

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Guangzhou is the hub of shark-fin processing in China, according to WildAid, which estimates that the Middle Kingdom accounts for 75% of shark-fin consumption world-wide.

“For us, this is a happy byproduct of the crackdown on corruption,” said Peter Knights, the group’s executive director, speaking in Beijing. “Tiger paws, ivory, shark fin—given the government campaign, I hope we’ll see a crackdown on all of them.”

While sharks have traditionally not engendered great sympathy among humans, they’re important apex predators that help maintain the ocean’s environmental balance. Many shark species have seen their numbers decline by as much as 90% in recent decades, according to WildAid, citing various scientific studies.

Chinese tourists posed for photographs as a gigantic shark replica floated into Sydney Harbour in 2013.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Shark fin soup – literally “fish wing stew” in Mandarin — reportedly emerged as a Chinese imperial delicacy around 1400, although some accounts cite its introduction several hundred years earlier. Over the centuries, it gained a reputation as an aphrodisiac replete with anti-aging properties. And its elaborate preparation, requiring up to 24 hours, has helped make it a status symbol at weddings and official banquets, including at then-Premier Zhou Enlai’s feting of President Richard Nixon at a state dinner in 1972.

In recent decades, China’s appetite for shark fin has grown rapidly, driven by growing wealth, fueling a global trade estimated at $500 million to $1 billion annually. That’s attracted the interest of organized crime, seen in a 2003 gangland slaying of two Hong Kong businessmen, a Chinese national and a local in Fiji, blamed by detectives on a fight over shark-fin profits.

Rising demand has also led fishermen to toss sharks back alive after stripping them of their valuable fins, leaving them to sink and suffocate. Of up to 100 million sharks killed annually world-wide, studies estimate that between 26 million and 76 million are slayed for use in soup, which can sell for up to $2,000 a bowl.

But not everyone is pleased with recent declines. “I still believe that not eating shark fin is a waste of resources,” said Cui He, secretary general of the Beijing-based China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Association. “It’s a traditional part of Chinese culture, like eating goose liver in France and caviar in European countries.”

The drop in demand is attributed in part to a Chinese ban announced in December 2013 of expensive alcohol, shark fin soup and other luxuries at official receptions as part of President Xi’s crackdown on corruption.

WildAid also cites the impact of a Chinese media campaign it coordinated featuring basketball player Yao Ming and actor Jackie Chan condemning the consumption of shark fin and other wildlife products. Two dozen airlines and five hoteliers agreed to stop serving the dish, including Emirates and Singapore Airlines, Hilton Worldwide, Shangri-La Hotels and Ritz-Carleton.

“There’s been a generational shift as well, how you convey status to others,” said Kent Anderson, vice chancellor with Australia’s University of Adelaide. “As greater wealth develops, it’s displayed more subtly. There’s also a nascent environmental awareness in China linked to the growing air pollution problem.”

In an online survey commissioned by WildAid, 85% of Chinese consumers in four cities said they gave up shark fin soup in the past three years.

“I tried it once and didn’t like it. And it kills the animal,” said Yang Fang, 42, a pharmaceutical industry worker in Beijing. “I think old people like this food more than young people.”

Consumers also have been influenced by reports of mercury in seafood and widespread counterfeiting of shark fins, WildAid said.

“If people can’t distinguish the fake from the real, why not use the fake,” Mr. Knights said. “The key thing is to break the back of this so sharks have a little more time to recover. They won’t survive long-term if they can’t get past this insidious threat.”

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